Looking for something?

Warning : Spoilers!

This is a gaming diary. There will be spoilers. If you don't mind, enjoy your stay. If you do, skip on the games you haven't played yet.

Archives

Archives

Summary of the Year 2010

Note to reader: This summary was written late in June of 2014, so the tone of the page is based on what I was all about at the time. Maintaining the blog for all these years has shown me that what I’m about at any given time always changes.

2010 was a slow year, or at least, it started out very slowly. Within a few months, though, I developed a consistency in the frequency of my postings and managed to keep it, more or less, for the rest of the year.

I was still a dirty pirate.

January

In January, I wrote about playing more of Dragon Age: Origins and kept playing Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, but that one didn’t last for long. I remember it being a great game, but I also remember getting to an area I didn’t like very much and just sort of forgetting about it. As I’m writing this, I’m noticing the horrible formatting of my posts at the time. I was probably using some strange blogger theme that caused this. I’m also noticing I wrote allot a lot. I like to think my English has improved since, though I still make mistakes.

February

In February, I continued to play Dragon Age: Origins and finally completed it at some point during the month. I also played through Mass Effect 2 in a couple of marathon sessions. Finally, I started Plants vs Zombies and made it clear that it wasn’t my aim to complete it in any normal amount of time. I’ve since completed the game several times, so there’s that. I’m not hearing a lot of good things about the mobile sequel and I actually did give it a shot, but I haven’t invested enough time into it to say for sure if I like it or not. This first run, I also played to completion, which happened in July of this same year, so my prediction was actually correct there.

March

In March, I tried Bioshock 2 because I enjoyed the first one a lot. I didn’t enjoy the second one nearly as much and gave up on it very early into the story. I actually wrote about giving up on it, so I guess that’s a plus.

I tried out Lucidity and told myself I love it, but looking back, I really, really don’t. It was an original concept at the time, but it just wasn’t very fun for me.

I continued to play Plants vs Zombies and wrote about it a couple of times during this month. Then there was several months of silence before July.

I gave Tropico 3 a shot, but as I say over and over again on this blog, I like Tropico games but I suck at them and I don’t enjoy repeating a level that lasts several hours over and over again, trying to beat it.

Feeding Frenzy 2 falls in the category of Why did I ever play this.I’ve beaten it for completion score’s sake, I guess. It wasn’t the first time I’ve beaten it either.

Bob Came in Pieces is a strange one. It was some sort of flying puzzle platformer or something. I’m pretty sure I’ve beaten it, but I can’t find any postings about that, so I may be remembering it incorrectly.

I don’t get Machinarium. So many people say so many good things about this game, but to me, it’s just an overly simple and very basic adventure game. Sure, it looks charming, but there’s almost no depth to it. I gave it a shot and wanted to like it, but it was abandoned soon enough.

With Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood, there was no issue of wanting to like it. I tried it out, didn’t enjoy it and forgot about it. It’s a basic shooter game that, at the time, looked more like a demo than a full game.

April

Gazillionaire III is an old and not very good game I rediscovered in April and gave it a try for nostalgia’s sake. I’m glad I did, but as I said, it wasn’t very good and that was the last I wrote about it. As I’m writing this, I’m getting the urge to try it out once again. It just wakes up memories of childhood gaming for me, I guess.

Just Cause 2 was something I wanted to like, but the PC controls turned me away.

Beat Hazard was something that was all the rage at the time – a randomly generated game based on music, allowing for infinite content.

As you can see I tried out and quickly abandoned three games in April. I also played through a big part of and then also abandoned two other games. The first was Pokemon: Soul Silver. I’ve probably played it before to, but didn’t write about it. This time, I got all the way past Lake Rage and to the final gym, but that’s where the game just stopped for some reason. The first time I completed it was during my Pokemon Challenge.

The other game was Avernum VI and I abandoned that one was I got to the Abyss. I’ve loved Spiderweb games since Exile III and I loved that one so much I played through the whole shareware part of Exile I and II. Avernum games aren’t as deep or as interesting, in my opinion, but they’re still some of the best RPGs in that budget area. Why I stopped at the Abyss, I have no idea.

May

In May, I got close to the point of abandonment in Pokemon: Soul Silver and caught a Red Gyarados at Lake Rage. I’ve also completed one of my favorite games – Portal, and it wouldn’t be the last time either.

I’ve played Assassin’s Creed 2 DRM-free, what with being a dirty pirate and all, but the novelty wore off in July and the game was abandoned. That would be the last of the franchise I’d see, at least up to this point (2014).

June

Nothing, absolutely nothing. The blog was on hiatus during this month. I wonder what my excuse was this time…

July

I played through a Nuzlocke Challenge of Pokemon: Fire Red. This was a brand new format I tried – putting the whole report in a single posting. It did not look good, but it will remain there for everyone to see. In all honesty, it didn’t feel like a proper nuzlocke, though. Playing on an emulator allowed me to grind as much and as quickly as I wanted, so a lot of the difficulty was removed.

In Elite Beat Agents, I unlocked the Divas and that was about as far as I got. I never beat the game on their difficulty.

This was the month I’ve beaten Plants vs Zombies to. I can’t stress enough how fun that game was and still is for me.

I played through Be a King II in a single session and dubbed it Settlers Lite. I only have a vague memory of the game. I should look into the series a bit more. I think it lived for quite a long time.

I’ve beaten ODD Society and wrote a single posting about it. Four years later, I still have no idea where to put this game. It has puzzle, exploration, adventure and action elements, but overall, it plays more like a check list than a game. I’m tempted to put it into the Why did I ever play thiscategory, but it’s definitely less deserving of the title than Feeding Frenzy 2.

I gave PlayStation 2 emulation another go and this time, it went well, but I didn’t exactly pick an amazing game to beat. Dark Cloud was fine, but it wasn’t great. There was too much grind, too little depth and it did not control well. Still, I did beat it. I think it was the first PlayStation 2 game I’ve beaten. I also wrote about it, a lot, and at the time, told myself I like it at least as much as I wrote about it.

Between the many Dark Cloud sessions, I invested a couple of hours into an early version of Desktop Dungeons. It’s a puzzle roguelike I liked the concept off. I understand the game has progressed a lot since, so I should probably give it another go at some point. The link should give you an idea if I did at some point after writing this.

Beating Dark Cloud made me try another PlayStation 2 game – Kingdom Hearts. People love it and I think I might be able to love it, if it weren’t for one thing – I don’t get it. Not sure what that means? That’s fine, neither am I. Still, the fact remains, I don’t get it. There’s probably something that needs to click for me to start really enjoying the game, and it never happened back then. Maybe it would if I gave it a try now, but it didn’t back then. I got to Tarzan’s Jungle, I think, and I just stopped playing.

August

I pirated and played through the campaign of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. I suck at RTS games, so I probably wouldn’t ever play the multiplayer. Because of that, I don’t really feel bad not paying €50 for a campaign, even one as interesting as this one was.

Minecraft was one of the first games I bought. I haven’t played it properly for a while now, but thanks to the community and the mods available for it, it remains and I’m certain it will remain a game that I’ll be going back to over and over again. The only thing that might change that is if something that’s better in every aspect gets made.

I started Puzzle Quest 2 in August and will eventually beat it, but it was much longer than I thought. I certainly enjoyed it more than Galactrix, but I’m not sure if I loved this one or Challenge of the Warlords more. I’ve beaten this one and never did Challenge of the Warlords, but I had the blog going for me this time, so there’s no conclusion to be drawn there.

I gave Elemental: War of Magic a try. It’s obvious from my writings that I wanted this game to be a brand new Master of Magic, but it really wasn’t. I hear Fallen Enchantress is better, but I have yet to give it a go (in 2014, that is).

September

September started with Eschalon: Book One. I liked it a lot, so I should buy it and the sequels at some point. It’s only slightly below the Spiderweb games if you ask me.

Before beating Eschalon and Puzzle Quest 2, I started with and beat Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. It was great, charming and fun, but once I paid off the loan for the shop, there wasn’t much incentive for me to keep playing. All that was left was to grind out the heroes and I’m not very much into grinding.

I gave Monster Rancher DS a try because I remembered liking the GameBoy Advance version, but I didn’t get far. It was just boring.

You might notice I’ve been focusing on the DS in these months. That’s because my second gaming laptop started dying during the summer of 2010. My first one died on me to, but I guess I didn’t learn my lesson. I had a couple of weeks telling myself everything was fine and that it was just the summer heat getting to it, but there was finally a point where I had to cut my losses and get a proper PC. The thing is, I had bad luck with the PC to. Due to a faulty power supply, I had to replace parts of it piece by piece over several months until I found which part was causing the issues and things finally stabilized.

Once I got my PC, I managed to squeeze in a session or two of Civilization V, but I didn’t write much about it. I just wanted to play at that point. I didn’t get to play a lot before the first part broke down, though. As I said, it would take months before I’d have the PC running properly.

November

In November, I first wrote a review of Away: Shuffle Dungeon. I started deluding myself into thinking people were interested in my poorly worded opinions at this time.

My PC was working for a few days, so I managed to squeeze in a completion of Shank and DeathSpank: Orphans of Justice. Shank was cool-looking and suitably challenging, while DeathSpank was just funny in a juvenile way. I enjoyed both. I also squeezed in a completion of Call of Duty: Black Ops before the month was over. It was another blockbuster I would never pay anything close to the full price for.

December

In December, I started with not playing anything and then getting through a few levels of Super Meat Boy. I should really get back to that game. Time, and the link, will tell if I actually ever do get back to it. Cataclysm was also released, so I played that and wrote about it on my World of Warcraft blog.

My dementia was going full swing, with me writing several short reviews about games I tried out. There was Devil’s Tuning Fork, Rogue Survivor, Ancient Trader, Hammerfight, and Emberwind. Devil’s Tuning Fork was somewhat original, but not fun for me. Rogue Survivor is something I enjoy the concept of, but rarely actually play. Ancient Trader was something I knew from before the blog and was somehow a portrayed as a brand new game with hand drawn beautiful graphics at the time of my review. Hammerfight seemed fun and actually original, but I never got back to it. Emberwind was beautifully polished, but I didn’t get back to it either.

Then I got sick. I got the flu before Christmas. I could barely move for over a week, short of breath, tired and aching all the time. I thought it was due to the fever, so I just shrugged it off and waited for it all to go away. At one point, I went to see my doctor and it turned out it wasn’t just the fever. I was getting half the oxygen I needed because my lungs weren’t working properly.

Long story short, it was the swine flu. It caused a pneumonia, so I ended up in a hospital for about three weeks. This cost me a year of college to and it made me rethink my weight issues. You see, I was fat that the time, really fat. I was well over 400 pounds. My hospital stay was a horrible experience. My hair went gray due to the stress and started falling out a few months after I got out, which is a temporary thing that apparently happens to people after they experience something seriously stressful. It will take me almost an entire year after that, but eventually, I do start losing weight and I can confidently consider myself normal weight now (in 2014). Hopefully, I’ll stay that way.

In any case, there was no postings in December or in early January of the next year. I did have my DS at the hospital, and I kept playing Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City for a while, but other than that, I didn’t do anything else.

Oh, and one other thing for December. If I remember correctly, this was the month I got a PSP Go from Lockerz. This is a weird and now, to me, completely useless site. Back then, it was new and you could earn points just for logging in daily. If you got lucky enough, you could trade those points for something nice every now and then. I got lucky and traded my PTZ, as they call it, for a brand new PSP Go. It was useless to me for months, since I couldn’t pirate on it, but once it got cracked, it was amazing.

Conclusion

2010 started slowly for the blog, but I managed to develop some sort of consistency within a month or two and ended up keeping it for most of the year. Sadly, the bad way the year ended meant I would not be posting for a while. My illness and other reasons made me basically abandoned the blog for the first half of the year 2011. After the final post in December, there wouldn’t be anything until July of 2011.

After that, though, I don’t think the blog will be abandoned for a long amount of time all the way up to the point of me writing this, in 2014.